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Eight thousand Prussians, escaped from pursuit by Marshal Ney, and arriving at Althoff, tried to mount a new attack by advancing, one does not quite know why, on Kuschitten instead of Eylau, but Davout drove them off, and the arrival of Ney's corps at Schmoditten towards the end of the day, made Benningsen fear that his line of communication would be cut, and so he ordered a retreat in the direction of Konigsberg, leaving the French masters of the horrible battlefield covered with dead and dying.
The plan failed, partly because Napoleon did not superintend its operation in person, partly because Davout did not coöperate with sufficient alertness, but chiefly through Jerome's ignorance, slowness, and self-assertion. Bagration turned back, and, descending the Dnieper, placed himself beyond pursuit.
All orders as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry all such orders were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned, without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon.
The line ran from Warsaw northwestward through Poland into Prussia, to the river's mouth near Dantzic. Bernadotte had eighteen thousand men; Ney, sixteen thousand; Soult, twenty-eight thousand; Augereau, eleven thousand; Davout, twenty thousand; Lannes, eighteen thousand; Murat, fourteen thousand; and the guard numbered fifteen thousand a total of about a hundred and forty thousand men.
At Landshut the Emperor became aware that the mass of the Austrian army was not before him, but before Davout. Leaving Bessières and two divisions of infantry, with a body of cavalry, to continue the pursuit of Hiller, he turned back toward Eckmühl at three in the morning of the twenty-second. Here, again, a great resolve was taken in the very nick of time and in the presence of the enemy.
At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a human being. He reflected for a moment. "How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout coldly.
Marshal Davout proposed to cross the thick curtain of forest extending on the left of the Russian army, and by taking the old Moscow road, turn the enemy's positions and seize their troops between two fires. Napoleon refused, thinking this movement too dangerous.
The Emperor Alexander had just learnt that Davout had appeared at Elbing: having crossed the Vistula, he was on his way to the Niemen.
Like Massena in Portugal, Davout found himself in disgrace because he was blamed with faults which he had not committed, and which he was unable to rectify. Meantime they had approached Smolensk. Alarming news awaited Napoleon at Dorogobouje. He had long reckoned on the assistance of the 9th corps, which Marshal Victor was bringing him from Germany.
The city was retaken, three thousand of Bernadotte's force marched out, and on May thirtieth Davout, with fifteen thousand of his own men and three thousand Danes, marched in. Napoleon's chief purpose, however, was unfulfilled, for Austria was neither panic-stricken nor dismayed. On the contrary, she still stood forth as a mediator, and now with armaments to enforce her demands.
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